European transaction tax "is not going to survive in its current form"

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Peter Spence

Reuters reports that the European Comission may be planning to scale back plans to introduce a financial transactions tax (FTT).

A redesigned levy would raise only about one tenth of what was once targeted, officials who have worked on the matter told Reuters, removing the claws from a proposal initially championed by Germany and France.

"The whole thing will have to be changed quite a lot," said one of the officials, who has closely followed negotiations over the levy, agreed last October and drafted by the European Commission. "It is not going to survive in its current form."